Even during primetime hours in popular US Steam download regions the PC BB population is so small now that I feel like I spend more time in lobbies than playing (if it’s not primetime, you’re just SOL). And when I do get a game somebody frequently quits as soon as the tide turns.
If all queues were merged then we aren’t in a situation where there are fewer than 10 people in multiple different queues waiting, or going to check other queues when they are actually empty. And if anybody quits for any reason (including not wanting to play the game mode that won the vote) at least they’ll be replaced promptly if players are inserted into games in progress.
Of course the question comes up “how do you deal with the fact that all the other players have been in the game gaining levels and shards”. Simple, just start the newly added player off at the same level as the leaver and with however many shards they had on hand and had spent on gear.
Yes, I can queue up with steam friends or see if anybody’s available on the discord channel, but not everybody’s got BB steam friends or knows about the discord, or maybe the only people playing are random strangers.
Not even a separate competitive queue? Nope, that’ll further fragment the player base. Besides, with this player pool it’s hard to get particularly competitive matchups outside of private games, so until we’ve got more players, if you really want a competitive match you ought to match up via discord anyway I’d assume.
I don’t know what the BB codebase looks like but I would hope that this wouldn’t take more than two to four weeks of work by a single dedicated engineer.
Anyway, just my $0.02 to keep this game alive…